I’ve had a go with the ColorMunki Photo monitor/print profiler and must say I’m happy (so far).
The first monitor calibration of my MacBook Pro looks good.
That’s something I’ve never achieved with the last profiler I used, an older profiler from x-rite with the i1Match software from about a few years back.
So the ColorMunki did well.
The contrast and colour looks good and it seems that the profile is a decent (although not perfect) match for the sRGB colour space.
The profile clips the greens and reds a bit – compared to sRGB – but extends the blues.
I think the clipping is due to the screen limitations of the MacBook Pro rather than the ColorMunki’s capabilities.
So overall the match is fine for non-critical work and to publish to the web.
I uncaged the munki using the NEC SpectraView Profiler 5 software (made by BasicColor) and the profile created is a slight improvement with better gradients and a slightly flatter gamma.
SpectraView Profiler 5 offers a decent report with lots of information re targeted and achieved colour values. It also gives good information re achieved delta e values.
The software uses far more colour patches than the munki software to create the profile, so I assume it would have to be slightly more accurate.
According to the SpectraView Profiler software the munki hardware did well as a measuring device.
The ColorMunki software is too limited to offer much post-calibration and profiling information. But it’s a consumer product, not a full professional device, so that’s to be expected.
It’s targeted at the kind of user who wants a nicely balanced screen, but doesn’t have enough technical knowledge to understand much of the data that gets generated during monitor calibration.
I’ll probably upgrade to the BasicColor Display 5 software (same as the re-batched NEC version) and live happily ever after.
I might also get something like the NEC Spectraview 241 monitor – with extended color gamut – for colour critical work. This has the (re-batched BasicColor Display 5) software supplied as part of the package.
To sum it up.
Happy with the tool as a monitor calibrator as is, but still happier when combining it with more sophisticated software.
If it does this well when creating printer profiles than it’s a worth while investment for the photographer who needs a good match between display and output.
As a bonus, the device is roughly NZ$600 here in Germany and that’s a lot cheaper than what it goes for in NZ.
So in this case, paying peanuts and getting a munki is a good thing.
